Shakespeare’s Word Puzzle is a wooden brain teaser from Professor Puzzle’s Great Minds collection, dedicated to William Shakespeare, who is credited with inventing more than two thousand English words and expressions. It is made up of sixteen letter tiles, and the challenge is to place them in a four-by-four grid without any row, column or diagonal repeating a letter.

• BrandProfessor Puzzle
• CollectionGreat Minds
• TypeLogic and placement puzzle
• MaterialWood
• Pieces16 tiles

How it works

Unlike the collection’s disentanglement models, there are no interlocked pieces here: it is a placement problem, related to Latin squares and sudoku-style puzzles. The rules fit in a single line, but each tile you place constrains the others in several directions at once, and it is easy to reach a dead end just when everything seemed to fit.

Inside the packaging you will find some of the words and phrases attributed to Shakespeare.

The Great Minds collection

Great Minds is a Professor Puzzle collection that links each brain teaser to a historical figure; each box includes a short biography of the person and explains how they relate to the puzzle. The display it comes from brings together six models from the collection, three in metal and three in wood, dedicated to Benjamin Franklin, Galileo, William the Conqueror, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton and William Shakespeare. The pieces have an aged finish that suits the historical theme. Professor Puzzle describes this model as challenging, without giving it a numerical level.